Enid Cherenson’s family has been buying seafood from Wulf’s Fish for 40 years.
Originally an iconic fish store in the Jewish district of Brookline, Massachusetts, Wulf’s Fish transitioned about a decade ago to become a wholesaler. Now it sells both to local restaurants and caterers and ships from its warehouse in the Boston seaport to devoted chefs and home cooks all over the country.
Cherenson, 73, still relies on Wulf’s for her pre-Passover purchases — especially the gefilte fish packages customized by Wulf family scion Richie Taylor, now 74. A traditionalist, Cherenson makes the dish from scratch — buying filets, bones and heads from Wulf’s to make her special recipe.
“We’ve been making my grandmother’s recipe my whole life,” Cherenson said. “I make it exactly the same way in exactly the same pot, and the pot only gets used for gefilte fish at Passover.”
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There are many loyal customers like Cherenson who’ve stuck with the company founded by Taylor’s great-uncle Sam Wulf in 1926. Wulf used to stock his store on Harvard Street in Brookline with fresh catch that he’d procure that morning walking the Boston Fish Pier before sunrise.
Many other customers come to Wulf’s because they’re looking for guidance on how to prepare gefilte fish the old-fashioned way. They may have a basic recipe inherited from their mother or grandmother but no idea what fish to use or how much.
That’s where Taylor’s expertise comes in. Wulf’s customer service representatives can answer most questions about the fish, but Taylor is on call if needed.
“I’ll talk to anybody who has questions,” he said. “They’re surprised that I’m still here.”
To help them figure out the puzzle — gefilte is traditionally made from whitefish, carp or pike — Taylor asks customers about their taste preferences, what their grandmother’s gefilte fish looked like and where their families are from. Plain carp is darker than other fish, while buffalo carp and whitefish are fattier. Russians, Europeans and Israelis typically would have used plain carp, whereas in New York the preference was for buffalo carp, or a mix of pike and whitefish.
Taylor can also tell what’s in a dish of already cooked gefilte just from taking a bite. Texture and taste are the tells. Whitefish has a fattier and softer texture than pike, according to Taylor, who prefers fattier fish. He likens the differences to making a burger using beef that’s 20 percent fat versus 3 percent: The texture is totally different.
“Richie comes and saves the day for everyone wanting to make gefilte fish,” says Alisha Lumea, Wulf’s vice president for marketing and brand strategy. “It seems like everyone is Richie’s favorite customer.”
Taylor, who worked summers in his uncle’s store when he was a kid, didn’t plan for a career in the family business. After high school he set off for the University of Vermont, where he majored in business. Then, in 1975, the newly minted graduate got a call from his Uncle Sam asking him to help out in the store.
The plan was to be there for a few weeks.
“It was a very busy retail store,” Taylor recalled. “I waited on customers, helped buy the fish. Back then, you did everything. Fortunately for me, I learned everything.” He calls this time in his life “fish college.”
At the time, the retail shop was among many fish stores in the Boston area. Rather than patronize supermarkets, most people shopped at mom-and-pop stores: the bakery for baked goods, the butcher for meat, the fruit store for produce and the fish store for seafood.
Wulf’s was among the few stores that stocked the typical freshwater fish needed for gefilte throughout the year. Back then gefilte fish was a weekly staple, especially among Boston’s large Jewish immigrant community from Eastern Europe, including many Holocaust survivors.
The older customers knew what type of fish they wanted, and about 40 percent of them ground it themselves, according to Taylor. Some customers had very specific preferences, wanting only Lake Michigan whitefish or “the buffalo carp with the small head,” Taylor said.
Demand peaked before holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Passover, when Wulf’s found itself inundated. If Passover came early and the lakes were frozen, you couldn’t get pike or whitefish, Taylor said. In some cases, customers would buy alternatives but ask Taylor to put pike on the sales slip so their mothers or wives wouldn’t catch on.
Wulf’s wasn’t just a store; it was a gathering place for Boston’s Jewish community. Customers waiting for their orders would kibbitz and share recipes.
Four years after the retail store closed in 2016, Wulf’s began selling fish online. Today the company offers everything from everyday favorites like salmon and red snapper to specialty items like lobster tails and caviar.
Although Wulf’s sells shellfish and other non-kosher items, they’re handled separately from the other fish at Wulf’s facility, which is certified as kosher by the Rabbinical Council of New England.
For those looking to prepare gefilte fish, Wulf offers ground gefilte fish provisions sold in one-pound, frozen-and-vacuum sealed packages of lake whitefish, walleye pike, buffalo carp or common carp. Taylor is on call for questions if needed.
Some customers order from Wulf’s Fish not just with a thought to their stomach, but their hearts — in short, tradition.
One repeat customer Taylor cited buys a single fish head with his pre-Passover gefilte fish order to memorialize his mother, who used to order a fish head for reasons he never learned.
“He and his sister, who makes the fish, do it to remind them of their mother,” Taylor said.
In an age of instant food and jarred gefilte fish, Wulf’s Fish is dedicated to helping customers drawn to the old ways.
“I hope more people will feel empowered to make gefilte fish at home,” Lumea said. “Otherwise, the tradition could die out.”
Home cooks or chefs can visit Wulf’s Fish website for Gertie Wulf’s gefilte fish recipe, or to place orders for a variety of other fish.
This article was sponsored by and produced in partnership with Wulf’s Fish, a Boston-based company that supplies chefs and home cooks across the country with premium seafood. This article was produced by The Nosher’s native content team.
